Summary The present study aims to examine fruit cell wall‐associated fruit softening in Lycium barbarum L. by the microstructure of the fruit cells and the changes in the contents of cell wall components, molecular weights of cell wall polysaccharides and the activities of related cell wall degrading enzymes at different development stages of L. barbarum L. fruit. Fruit firmness significantly declined during ripening, with the greatest reduction between the 28 and 35 days stages. The decrease in firmness correlated with an extensively deformed microstructure in the parenchyma tissues and positively correlated with reductions in the contents of fruit cell wall materials and molecular weight in cell wall polysaccharide. Cellulase, α‐galactosidase, polygalactosidase and pectin methylesterase showed higher activities during 28 days; whereas, the activities of β‐galactosidase were higher during 35 days. These results indicate that cell wall‐related processes are a key feature of early softening in L. barbarum L.

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Water vapor temperatures in a heating device were measured by ultra-low sampled and high-precision tunable diode laser spectroscopy (TDLAS). Bichromatic distributed feedback (DFB) lasers were used as light sources. Sampled data at an ultra-low rate was collected after laser passing through a low-pass filter and served as the inputs of an artificial neural network. Classical direct absorption spectroscopy using the line-shape fitting method provided the training dataset, i.e., the integrated absorbances. The proposed method required an ultra-low sampling rate, i.e., only 1/50 of the classical method, but its calculation speed was nearly 14,000 times faster. Also, the proposed method yielded satisfying estimates at temperatures uncovered by the training dataset and was insensitive to random noises.

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